So, instead of chatting someone up in person, you first have your robot figure out who in the crowd won't tell you to get lost?

Or is this more of an emergency thing (the "direly need" bit) when you NEED to connect with somebody in a hurry. I could see it maybe as a health care application. E.g. an insulin-dependent diabetic who for some reason is stranded without the right food and drugs they need at the moment. They could use the phone to link to the nearest source of help - a pharmacy, food store, hospital.

I could see this working if it was a service offered by a drug store chain. The retail stores could be permanently transmitting the info about who and where they are. A user (e.g. the diabetic lost in Paris) would type in a worldwide number/identifier for diabetics and the link would be made telling them where to find help.

It would be paid for by drug stores (or other service providers, e.g. for-profit health centres, hospitals, etc.), and / or would charge users a small fee per use.

I'm assuming this product would be a piece of software (from your descrip and from the CH general rules).

Besides the legal drug user, I suppose illegal drug users might also piggyback onto this. Might be something to consider in the design.

Hi Jill, you r correct..the scope is not defined here...it can be extended to community services.

But the negative view like usage by drug peddlars..is surprising. Planes do crash and people die..so did they stop working on it. Every system will have plus and minus factors. refining the system is not in the scope of this topic :))

Hi Coxswain,

Can you say more about your vision of who the users would be?

The illegal drug thing is a bit of a red herring, so let's not let it take the thread off course. (Sorry if it was beyond scope of the discussion). When I was picturing users, they were one group who came to mind.

As the title asks, how do you see this making money?

Thx.

Hi jill,

unfortunately i'm a less business minded person:) But just thought of applications that evolved from the primitive p2p which was developed by a student to share files within his college network...

hmm...the app has more dimensions than we discussed so far, i felt.

Have you heard of the hankie code? The colour of your handkerchief and whether you have it hanging from your left or right back pocket signals certain sexual preferences - especially among gays.

I think your idea is to develop a device that can handle more parameters. A person with such a device can go to a nightclub and find someone who fits his/her profile. You might find that the person sitting next to you on a train is also interested in collecting stamps, or whatever.

It probably wouldn't be a good idea to enter a profile which says you want to do something illegal - since the person you connect with could be an undercover police officer.

The device has some way to find other devices - either via a central server or as peer-to-peer. I prefer the peer-to-peer because that will work without internet network access, and the system will be more secure since no profile data is stored in a central place. It's a headache to design the server, too, since the server will need to somehow know where you are, so that it can find others in the same vicinity.

You can make money by selling the device.

Take a look at Load Pooling (posted July 12/06).

Maybe there's a fit?

(Or with other "matching" type proposals).

I'm warming up to this idea as I begin to see commercial applications.

Good luck.

Could you call it "proximity-based messaging"? Does that fit your idea, Coxswain?

Jill, proximity-based messaging..the usage I really like!!! Cool...

I like to see it further as a Proximity-based snapshot.. Can't it be used as a snapshot in case of any event in a region? That was why I was insisting on a centralized server...for collecting evidences

Rawkin', Load Pooling, i'm hearing for thr first time, sorry for that, lemme check. can u give me some links on that :)

Thnx

I think this has potential. The only thing I see as a problem is developing a program that runs on all the proprietary platforms there are out there for mobile devices. Also with security the way it is it could leave major holes for hackers and the like if not done properly.

Hi again,

1. Load Pooling is another idea out there on CH - I think you can search by idea name and find it, my apol for not having a link handy. It's an idea here in CH, posted July 12/06 (not by me).

2. I think adding photos might be another idea - suggest maybe start a new thread for it.

Good luck!

Connecting people to people and people to places via mobile devices will be a MASSIVE opportunity over the next few years, and especially when the larger public is enabled by even better mobile devices with internet/Wi-Fi connections.

The big inhibitors to this "social connectivity software" will be privacy advocates and security issues. Usage of various social connectivity software will have to be voluntary (I might not want to be blasting my info out to other mobile users), protected by encryption, and configurable to allow varying levels of data dissemination (some people may want to limit the info they transmit)

Jill, I searched Load Pooling in this site..didnt find a result. And whats that ...that term also was new to me :(

And about the concerns of doc_solid and longhorn..the concerns are extremely valid and my first document on this idea had this perspective in its baseline. But due to the limitations on the number of chaters that can be typed here...could not present the full document.

Still I would like to put it like usage of phone calls which usually have a privacy tag attached to it until the legal bodies can tap it on suspicion.

Afterall it helps... is my thought:))

Hi coxswain,

I didn't realize it was hard to search ideas by name, but I tried too and was unsatisfied.

Load Pooling was put up by edz197. If you go community-members to find him, and then click his name to get his profile, eventually you can get a list of his ideas - there's only one.

Sorry for the trouble, I thought it would be easier to search.

I like proximity-based messaging. I hope it catches fire on here.

Cheers.

Sorry, for not being in the loop for a while...

Basically I had an academic interest on this concept like..when it gets heavily networked..we can analyse the patterns, like the connections between various communities, their activities spreaded over various regions, their synchronizations, the point where one community gets linked to others..Dont know, may be an over-statement this is "predictability of events?", so on..

Let these statements not over-ride the privacy factor!!!

hmm... I dont know why people dont find a future in it!!!! Atleast for me Ideas never meant converting to money directly...Why people are hesitant to introducing new systems..? any answers welcome :))

What you're talking about is a lilly pads effect - it's actually a dream - that the wireless (wi-fi) technology will admit for densly populated areas.

Well, there are some implementations of what you're talking about already around: e.g. there's FON (www.fon.com). But their infrastructure is not as dynamic as you propose.

Well, the handheld devices of today simply do not have enough battery to be switching IP packets for other people. And there are too few always-on pocket wifi smartphones out there.